Home
Dear Reader.
The following sermon was written to be
spoken. It may not follow the conventions of documents which were written to be
read. It also will not reflect the energy and nuances of the speaker.
If you
can embrace these caveats, please, read on.
Pastor Jef
Sermon
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the most solemn day of the Jewish year.
It is the culmination of the 40 days of reviewing our actions, of trying to do
better, which begins with the month of Elul, and then continues with Rosh
Hashanah and the remaining ‘days of penitence’. Like all days in the Jewish
calendar, it is marked from sunset to sunset, so begins at nightfall.
This evening observant and many otherwise non observant Jews will begin a day
which by design, is like no other day. A day of repentance. A day of atonement.
A day of hope.
http://news.reformjudaism.org.uk/calendar/2009-09-28/yom-kippur.html
We read from the Reform Judaism UK website
It is a day when Jews are totally cut off from our normal routine, and one of
the ways in which this is done is by fasting. Strict observance requires no food
or drink for the 25 hours of the fast, but this may not be possible for medical
reasons.
While fasting is a very important part of Yom Kippur, for all those who are
able to, within Reform thought and practice, it is not regarded as an end, but
as an aid to the prayers and the true purpose of the day.
While
individuals may not stay in synagogue for the whole day, the services continue
throughout the day. The service for the eve of Yom Kippur is called the Kol
Nidre, from the opening words sung. The Kol Nidre service is the only evening
service when the tallit, prayer shawl, is worn. The day itself has 5 consecutive
services. The Musaf, or additional, service re-enacts as much as possible the
ancient Yom Kippur ritual, described in the Torah, when the High Priest went
into the Holy of Holies, to seek atonement. A particularly poignant service for
many is the Yizkor service, when deceased loved ones are remembered. And the day
ends with a long blast of the Shofar, the ram’s horn.
While it is a time
for atonement, it is taught that Yom Kippur atones for sins committed against
God. For sins committed against an individual, one should ideally ask
forgiveness of the person wronged before Yom Kippur.
In Matthew 5 v23-24 we read. So when you are offering your gift at the
alrar, if you remember that your brother of sister has something against you,
leave your gift there before the altar and go, first be reconciled to your
brother or sister and then come and offer your gift. I include this because the
wisdom of making amends was brought forth in the new testament. Of course, many
of you will point out that the rabbi who was quoted was steeped in the
traditions of the old testament. But I digress.
By the end of the
day long observence of Yom Kippur, there is a feeling that somehow there is
genuine forgiveness, and we are enabled to start a new year.
We
Unitarian Universalists hold Judaism as one of our roots and yearly,
congregation by congregation we elect to honor some of the Jewish traditions as
our own, as befits a critical mass of members. It’s congregational polity or
choice. If we have enough people interested organizing the service and there are
enough interested in attending, then the congregation does it. For instance, we
here at FUSW will have a Yom Kippur Service tonight lead by our Rabbi du jour,
Ron Katz. In Ames Iowa, they won’t. I checked. There is a Reform Temple in Ames,
which means there are former Jews in Ames, who might be attending the UU
congregation. Just not enough to put a service together.
From A UU Liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
http://www.uuja.org/holidays/lit/high_holy_days_duhamel.htm
According to
legend on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, the Angel of Life writes each of our
destinies for the year to come. During the ten days following, the Days of Awe,
the Book of Life is kept open. If we then merely try to understand how to take
the Torah's insights, or the law, with us into the everyday world, the Angel of
Life must reconsider what has been written.
From the Chabad. Org website
Torah does not mean law, but it comes from the root of the word Horaah which
means “instruction.” Torah is G-d’s instruction or teaching to mankind.
From this perspective one may summarize that Torah is the instruction manual
to lead an ethical and moral life here on Earth. Furthermore, it is a living
Torah and a true Torah in the sense that it is not abstract knowledge created by
men, but given by a living G-d as a guide to live a truly fulfilled, meaningful
and holy life.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/361894/jewish/Torah-Study.htm
and from A UU Liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Congregation: On Yom Kippur we are called to look at how we may live our lives
in the year to come.
Reader 3: We have been given freedom to choose to be
human beings, even in this world where it often seems as if no one behaves as a
human being.
http://www.uuja.org/holidays/lit/high_holy_days_duhamel.htm
When I was a mere and callow youth in beautiful Troy, Ohio, home of Kitchenaid
appliances, I attended, with my family, and with no choice, Trinity Episcopal
Church. In our Sunday service, which I’m sure in the opinion of many, had no
connections with Jewish tradition, we would recite the general confession. You
heard it today, it was our pre sermon reading. In the confession we would
corporately declare before god:
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have
followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended
against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have
done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there
is no health in us.
I can’t help but notice that in the body of this
confession the confession is to god. There is no attempt to admit to our fellow
human beings that we are aware of our incompleteness. I couldn’t help but notice
the similarity between the thrust of the atonement before god at Yom Kippur.
There is also an underlying assumption in the confessions of Yom Kippur and
the general confession and that is free will. There are givens in our lives, our
parents, our country, our skin color our sex and gender. There are also our
options, what we do with what we have.
We UUs have avoided this kind of
acknowledgement in our gatherings. In our devotion to individual pursuit of
spirituality, some of the things of corporate ritual have been set aside. Not
sure it’s a good idea.
Why do we come to services? Is it the
opportunity to drink coffee and chat? Is it a place to wait while our kids are
getting their weekly dose of RE? Is it a place of community with all the ups and
downs of being in community with people who choose to be part of the group?
While I was working in Cincinnati at the CBS affiliate television station, we
had a live Sunday morning show called “Call the Doctor.” Each week we’d have
four doctors addressing questions from viewers about a particular specialty of
medicine. Psychiatry, family medicine, orthopedics. You get the idea. Yeah,
viewers would call in with their questions and operators would write them down.
The moderator would screen the questions, pass them to a doc and the doc would
answer them. This was back in the very early 70s. Much has changed with medical
information since then. On this weekly program we had a fairly regular doc who,
for my taste, was a narrow minded, agenda driven shrew of a man. . . who I
didn’t think much of. However, he did say one thing that stuck and that
is: a spiritual community is a hospital for the incomplete rather than a museum
for the perfect.
Hospital for the incomplete.
When our Director of Religious Education,
John Cavallero was grieving the loss of his mother and let us know he would not
be with us on our first Sunday of the season, I sent him a note. I congratulated
him on taking care of himself. John and I grew up in a time when a man took a
hit, shook it off with, “I’m alright, Jack” and proceeded forward. Remnants of
the romance of WW2, hyper masculine modeling . . . . . and completely off the
mark. It is right and proper to say, I’m hurt, I need the time with my family to
grieve.
I believe a healthy Community is a place where we can be ourselves and that
includes being less than perfect and those around us being OK with it anyway.
In the chalice lighting words this morning you heard “In the presence of our
brothers and sisters we recognize the moments we have loved with less than a
pure heart.”
In the presence of each other we admit we are not always the best a person
can be.
The next line is “Knowing this we look to be set free from inward
turmoil
and reaffirm our souls in patience and self-mastery.”
Not exactly the drama of the Yom Kippur laundry list of ways we have
transgressed against god and our fellow man. Closer, perhaps to the left undone
the things we ought to have done, but god has been removed from it.
Let me go back the concept that this community is a hospital, haven perhaps,
for the admitted incomplete. With incompleteness comes the opportunity of
working toward completeness.
I’ll digress here for a moment and speak of terms. I like incomplete rather
than broken as we speak of our lives. Incomplete suggests a moving toward
completeness and broken suggests there was a time when we were not broken, when
we knew what it was like to be whole. It’s the story of Adam and Eve, who were
once complete and then, broken and tossed out of the garden. I much prefer the
model of never, ever complete, always moving toward completeness. It’s a moving
target. Completeness at 15 is not the same as completeness at 40 and
completeness at 40 isn’t the same as 70. So that is why I look to a healthy
spirityual community as a place where we can move together, celebrating our
moving toward completeness rather than mourning what we were at one time.
And you know, there are UUs all across this country who think that putting
forward the “I’m alright Jack” persona is the way to be in community. In spite
of job situations and family challenges, some of our brothers and sisters
believe that the universe has found them unworthy, that there was more they
could have done and the self inflicted shame is too much to share.
A
couple of years ago I heard about an engineer who worked for GE and attended a
UU Congregation. He liked the spiritual intellectual stimulation he found there
and he was clear that he liked the upper middle class atmosphere. When he was
fired from GE, he stopped going to church. He felt he was no longer part of the
group . . . . just when he needed community most and the community needed him to
say “I’m hurt. I need help. Walk with me.”
Yearly Jews around the world gather to ritually reflect on their
incompleteness before god and resolve to mindfully work toward wholeness in
their relationship with god and their fellow human beings.
Every week the Episcopalians, other protestants and Catholics, before they
celebrate the mass, corporately speak of their incompleteness and ask for god’s
help in restoring them to god’s ways.
For us, not so much. We celebrate our individuality, our Darwinian survival
of the spiritually fittest, and why else would we be here? Yeah, no.
My friends. Yom Kippur, the yearly observance of our incompleteness is, I
believe a good start, a weekly observance of our incompleteness is better, a
daily recognition is better yet.
And before you think I’m going the route of scouges and repeated utterances
of I’m not worthy, I’m not going there. Embracing the incomplete for me is
both being honest and optimistic. I am not whole, I’d like to be, and with the
love of a community, such as FUSW, we can get there together. We minister to one
another because that is who we are and its what we do. Each day I can choose to
reflect on whatever is reminding me I’m incomplete and I can choose to do
something about it, even if it is a small gesture. I can come to services each
week and be in the presence of others who are incomplete and are choosing to
move toward wholeness.
The chalice lighting words you heard this morning you will hear again in
other services I conduct. We might even reach a point where we recite the words
together in a corporate moment of embracing our collective incompleteness as
well as our corporate ministry to one anther as we move toward completeness
together.
The observance of Yom Kippur is a root of our tradition from which
we can take direction and guidance in our lives together. I close with the words
you heard at the end of the chalice lighting
Here we recommit ourselves to the highest tasks seen in moments of vision, to
the building of a nobler life for all
and in that consecration of ourselves we find strength and peace and joy.
©2009 Jeffrey Gamblee
Return to
Home
Return to Sermons Index